Swizz Beatz - Change Is Gonna Come

“He’s the realest in the game,” Swizz Beatz said in a 2009 interview for MTV. “He was never on no jewelry, no cars. X, he’s one artist that I truly know is a real artist.” 2010 was a year of setbacks for DMX, but the Dark Man is back in 2011 with the encouraging Change Is Gonna Come, off of Swizz’s Monster Mondays series. On Change, sampling connoisseur Swizzy flips Sam Cooke’s classic into an upbeat loop while the dog convinces his fans that he’s back. After DMX sings his heart out in the introduction, which sounds eerily similar to a blender being switched to on, he falls right into his trademark bark-flow calling out the impostors in the rap game and hyping us for his comeback: “You know what it is ‘cause you knew what it was / Let a n**ga go, Imma do what it does.” Fittingly, Change shows us a changed DMX; leaving the dog barks out of this one but keeping the tenacious charisma that his fans know and love. Hats off to the newly clean X. Let’s hope that this change is here to stay.